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Business Intelligence & Analytics Cost Accounting:
A Survey on the Perceptions of Stakeholders
Raphael Grytz
Paderborn University
Artus Krohn-Grimberghe
Paderborn University
Abstract
As data driven decision-making using business
intelligence and analytics (BI&A) becomes standard
in companies, the importance of mitigating the
accompanying growth in costs increases. Research
shows that increasing transparency to the granularity
of individual BI&A artefacts such as reports or
analytic applications is a necessary means, but in
practice the introduction of said systems is
cumbersome and adoption is slow. We address the
status quo of BI&A cost accounting for three types of
stakeholders: users, developers and managers. The
results show in which areas of application a strong
need for action exists and we identify major challenges
for further research are ahead. Our findings indicate
for example that managers at the same time regard
cost accounting for BI&A with a higher potential
benefit while they also believe they have already
established a higher degree of implementation in their
enterprises compared to the other stakeholder types.
We conclude that BI&A professionals have to consider
these different perceptions to run a successful
department and gain traction for BI&A cost
accounting.
1. Introduction
To compete successfully in the marketplace, it is
becoming increasingly important for an enterprise to
utilize the full potential of data-driven decision
support that Business Intelligence & Analytics
(BI&A) promises [24]. Chen et al. [5] define BI&A as
“the techniques, technologies, systems, practices,
methodologies, and applications that analyze critical
Business data to help an enterprise better understand
its business and market and make the timely decisions
it needs”. In most enterprises, an internal department
for BI&A, which in most cases is organized as a BI
Competency Center (BICC) [23], provides this
information through a company-specific BI&A
architecture and organization. Today, the benefits of
BI&A are undisputed and it has reached most
enterprises.
While current discussions in the field of BI&A are
dominated by potential benefits of big data [1, 19], the
costs of establishing and maintaining BI&A systems
are often overlooked. Due to complex architectures
[17], in addition to the high speed of innovation in
technology and methods [5], the costs of BI&A have
recently increased. The costs associated with such
systems need to be transparent to management to
allow for correct business decision-making [24]. This
is especially important during times of increased
global competition [12, 22].
We believe, this lack of cost transparency is a
significant driver for increasing BI&A costs. If
customers are not paying for BI&A resources, then
they have no interest in saving money for the
company. To increase consciousness, customers have
to pay the cost for services they demand. Payment
must then be charged without this billing
disproportionate costs. Besides being cheap and
efficient, such an accounting system is fair inasmuch
as service consumers have to pay for the costs they
cause [14]. Additionally, without such a system,
outlay cannot be priced reliably; this is true for the
company’s entire BI&A investments as well as
individual applications within the BI&A department.
Although companies are looking for new outsourcing
opportunities, e.g. delivering BI&A as a service [2,
15], without cost transparency any outsourcing
decisions with respect to specific parts of a BI&A
landscape cannot be evaluated. Furthermore, it is
difficult to locate potential for improving efficiency
and productivity, for planning the use of resources,
and for justifying it to management. With improved
cost transparency, a BI&A department can locate cost
savings and cost drivers.
The necessary cost transparency can be provided
by a BI&A cost accounting system. Such a system can
be used as a managerial instrument which delivers
information about value streams and for planning,
controlling and monitoring all tasks in the BI&A
organization [16, 20] in a fast, efficient, and data-
Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2018
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/49982ISBN: 978-0-9981331-1-9(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Page 750
driven way. Current research on BI&A cost
accounting regarding management objectives and
design principles [10] shows the importance of this
topic on a managerial level as well as first realistic
implementation guidelines [14].
With an appropriate cost accounting system, it will
also become possible to calculate costs for both
individual BI&A artefacts and entire BI&A projects.
In addition, with the ability to calculate BI&A
applications, incoming BI&A demands could be
prioritized according to their expected benefit (value).
This would improve the efficiency (cost-benefit
perspective) of the whole BI&A department and
increase the productivity of BI&A resources. Aside
from the possibility of allowing make-or-buy
decisions or cost benchmarks to be made, improved
cost transparency would come one step closer to
performing a profitability analysis.
Even with the recent proposals, especially the one
from [14] becoming more feasible both from an
implementation and a consumption view, the
introduction of a BI&A related cost accounting in the
enterprise often fails or is not seen to be successful.
One of the reasons for less success in practice could be
the divergent perceptions of stakeholders regarding
information systems (IS) [28]. In particular, this is true
of the success of analytic information systems where
the perception of different stakeholders is identified as
a significant characteristic [27]. Yet there is not
sufficient study of whether, and to what extent, the
perceptions of stakeholders related to BI&A cost
accounting reveal differences regarding and negative
influence on the introduction of such a system.
Therefore, the core question of this paper is this: Are
there different perceptions of stakeholders affected
which could influence the success of a cost accounting
initiative for BI&A and, if so, how can these divergent
perceptions be identified? To close this research gap,
we carry out a descriptive-explorative survey in order
to collect required data and permit further analysis.
More precisely, we aim to examine the issue by
developing sensitivity for the different subjective
assessments of the potential benefits, the degree of
implementation, and the implementation challenges
regarding a BI&A cost accounting. We see our results
being used to assist BI&A professionals planning to
introduce cost accounting approaches for BI&A in
companies.
Our main contributions are:
• Divergent perceptions among users, developers,
and managers. Our findings confirm that there are
indeed substantial differences in the perception of
BI&A cost accounting and the implementation of
such systems among the three major stakeholder
groups (users, developers, managers) included in
the survey.
• Identification of the differences in perception for
single stakeholder groups. We note that
stakeholders have different priorities and
potentials regarding a BI&A cost accounting
system. For example users assessed the potential
benefit for continuous cancellation management
by cost evaluation as low. By contrast, developers
predict less potential benefit from outsourcing
opportunities, whereas managers assessed the
highest potential benefit for justification towards
management. If these different perceptions are not
considered during the planning process, the
introduction of the BI&A cost accounting system
is endangered.
• Selling the BI&A cost accounting to the
enterprise. The differences we found among the
stakeholder groups stipulate that selling the idea
of BI&A cost accounting works best when
building on the intrinsic motivation of the
managers while leveraging the more positive
attitude of the developers and users.
• Higher acceptance of BI&A cost accounting and
project success. We offer a definition and way of
prioritizing the needs for action and challenges
resulting from the implementation of a BI&A cost
accounting system. Proper prioritization aligned
with user needs helps increase acceptance and
thus project success.
• High potential among all stakeholder groups.
Last but not least, we can confirm that all
stakeholder groups see a high potential in the
establishment of a BI&A cost accounting system.
This also highlights the necessity of action to
implement a BI&A cost accounting system in
order to improve the cost transparency in BI&A
departments among the organizations surveyed.
With this research, we contribute to implementing
cost accounting for BI&A in companies and create a
foundation for further research to this topic.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the conceptual foundations for this
paper. In chapter 2.1, we present the current research
on BI&A cost accounting. The influence of the
stakeholder perspective on IS in general and BI&A in
particular will be dealt with in Section 2.2. Our
research concept is described in Section 3, above all
the research method used and a statistical description
of our sample. Section 4 holds the presentation of our
analysis and discussion of findings. The last section
concludes with an explanation of the limitations and
gives an outlook on future work.
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2. Conceptual foundation
In this section, we give a brief overview of the
current research on BI&A cost accounting.
Furthermore, we present relevant knowledge about the
influence of stakeholder perspectives on IS and BI&A
success.
2.1. A brief overview of the current research
on BI&A cost accounting
At present, increasing demands for BI&A continue
to challenge existing BI&A landscapes in companies.
From IS literature, it is clear that architectures,
organizations, and technologies must be adapted [19];
this, however, often results in an increase in costs. In
our experience, BI&A departments are under rising
cost pressure and must demonstrate efficiency,
productivity, and cost optimization on a day-by-day
basis. Consequently, these departments are forced to
try and justify a monolithic BI&A cost block to
management. Cost allocation systems to mitigate this
problem are identified in the literature [11, 18, 26].
However, usually few details are given: there are some
frameworks for summing up the total cost of BI&A
technology landscapes in companies e. g. by return on
investment (ROI) level [22, 30]; there are also some
other approaches proposing cost estimation based on
resource consumption [4, 21]. The paper by Brandl et
al. [4] introduces a method aimed at determining
usage-based cost allocation keys for customer-
oriented services based on their estimated resource
consumption. This can be achieved if every user
request is tracked across systems using a unique user
ID, resulting in detailed monitoring and metering of
users’ resource consumption. This approach only deals
about allocation keys without proposing a whole cost
accounting related to BI&A. Klesse [21] focuses on a
method of carrying out cost allocation for data
warehouse competency centers (DWH CC). Products
and services of the DWH CC are modeled as so-called
information products; for a modeled information
product, platform and process services must be
assigned in detail. Due to the fact that the resulting cost
accounting system is based on the information product
model, accounting can be carried out in a very detailed
fashion on the costs-by-cause principle, yet only for
the DWH layer.
What is missing is a detailed holistic BI&A cost
accounting approach. Seeing it from an IT perspective,
[3, 29] point out that IT costs allocation is necessary to
improve cost transparency and that this is a
challenging task with problems which remain
unresolved; this holds true for BI&A especially [14].
We concluded that, in literature to date, four principle
kinds of cost accounting for BI&A have been
discussed: 1. No allocation of costs is executed.
2. Costs are allocated using flat-rate distribution keys.
3. Costs are charged using a production-oriented
allocation base, e. g. CPU or memory utilization.
4. Costs are calculated using product-oriented
approaches which are too technical and overly detailed
in their current form. Although BI&A is driven by IT
[2, 5, 25], due to fundamental characteristics we
discussed in [14], such as developmental and
operational architecture, business domain, technical
and functional requirements, costs which appear for
BI&A must be treated differently when thinking about
a cost accounting. This makes it difficult to transfer
and apply existing cost accounting approaches to
BI&A.
Grytz and Krohn-Grimberghe created a BI&A
service-oriented cost allocation (BIASOCA) [14]
which quantifies and subsequently breaks down the
cost pool generated by BI&A in an understandable and
yet efficient way. BI&A services are defined through
the activities carried out by a BI&A department. The
definition of an accounting net and a cost model then
is used in combination with the mentioned BI&A
services to create a company-specific and
understandable service catalog. This work improves
cost transparency and enables internal processes for
invoicing BI&A service purchasers and consumers
within the organization in a fairer and more exact way.
2.2. Influence of the stakeholder perspective
on IS evaluation
There is no shortage of research on IS evaluation
which both forms the basis of varied academic activity
and is widely used in practice until today [6]. Early
research emphasizes the existence of differences
regarding the perspective from which the success or
efficiency of IS is evaluated within organizations [28].
Often, these perspectives are classified by stakeholder
types. Common types are end user (consumer), IT
personnel, management, and external stakeholders
[13]. The research on IS evaluation is also applied to
BI&A when it comes to success models where there
is, as a minimum, differentiation by end-user-side and
BI&A department-side [7, 27]. However, in literature
to date, there is a common understanding of how
strongly the different stakeholder perspectives
influence IS evaluation [28]. Referring to our research
question in Section 1, the extant research on IS
evaluation suggests that different stakeholder types in
companies come to different assessments regarding
BI&A cost accounting initiatives.
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3. Research concept
The aim of this paper is to determine a way of
producing practice-based estimates on the potential
benefits and the degree of implementation for specific
application areas of cost accounting for BI&A.
Beyond this, this study focuses on the current
challenges for practical implementation of cost
accounting for BI&A. With the results of this paper,
we are able to show need for action and identify
barriers to new and further development of cost
accounting for BI&A. The next two subsections sum
up the research method used and detail the
demographic structure of our sample.
3.1. Research method
The underlying data used for this study was
collected by a quantitative-empirical survey using a
standardized online questionnaire. This survey
includes all items which are used to answer our
research question. The survey structure is based on
investigations carried out by Dinter et al. [8]. The
questionnaire consists of three parts: a general section
about the respondent and the organization with their
BI&A environment, general questions about BI&A-
related cost accounting, and a part regarding
challenges and the use of BI&A cost accounting. The
survey items were readjusted so that they fit to the
underlying topic of BI&A cost accounting.
A short introduction to the term BI&A cost
accounting was given to ensure a common
understanding. Consultants or academics were then
asked to respond from the point of view of the
customer they know best. Prior work by Dinter et al.
[8] suggests to consider the BI life cycle of [9], for
structuring the questions related to investigated
application areas into BI&A development/ operation,
BI usage, and an organizational dimension. Table 1
gives an overview of the structure with investigated
application areas. These application areas were
assessed by a five-point Likert scale. The respondents
were asked to assess the potential benefits
(5=“essential”, 4=“high benefit”, 3=“nice to have”,
2=“low benefit”, 1=“no benefit”) and the degree of
implementation (5=“implemented”,
4=“implementing”, 3=“planned”, 2=“initiative
failed”, 1=“no entry”) of the mentioned application
areas.
Table 1. Application areas of BI&A cost
accounting
Another perspective we intend to examine are the
implementation challenges of BI&A cost accounting.
Table 2 gives an overview of the relevant items. The
respondents also rate the efforts for this challenges on
a five-point scale (1=“insignificant”, 2=“low”,
3=“moderate”, 4=“huge”, 5=“insurmountable”).
Table 2. Implementation challenges of BI&A
cost accounting
The questionnaire developed was evaluated by
experts from industry and university on content,
structure, and language. After this pre-test, feedback
was considered and the structure was redesigned for
better readability. The online questionnaire was sent at
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first to 1,202 German TDWI members (The Data
Warehousing Institute) at the end of 2016.
Additionally, this survey was posted in groups for
business intelligence on XING.com. To gain a better
result from practice, BI&A departments from five
large companies where asked to participate in the
survey. After two months, this procedure was
repeated. The online survey platform was configured
so that each attendee could only participate once.
3.2. Structure of the sample
As we were focussing on BI&A cost accounting,
our target group were BI&A stakeholders. We
estimate that there was a total of about 3000 recipients
for this survey; precisely 251 BI&A stakeholders took
part. Given this approximation of our potential
attendees, we can assume a response rate of about
11.9%. From this percentage, we collected 59
complete answer records. Table 3 presents an
overview of our sample by company size and BI&A
experience.
To answer our research question, we considered
the following three stakeholder types: BI&A user,
BI&A developer, and BI&A manager. External
stakeholders are not included in this survey because
we are looking at the internal structure of BI&A
organizations. Table 3 shows our sample divided by
the three different stakeholder roles into BI&A users
with 21 participants (35.6%), BI&A developers with
24 participants (40.7%), and BI&A managers with 14
participants (23.7%). We can classify our population
as experienced, with 61.0% having “6 to 10 years”
behind them in the area. BI&A users above all
classified themselves as less experienced, with up to 5
years (23.7%).
In terms of the BI&A organization, 49.2% deal
with 100 to 999 BI&A users. 25.4% of the participants
are in companies with 1,000 and above 9,999 BI&A
users. Another interesting point is the heterogeneity of
the BI&A landscape: 44.1% are working with 3 up to
5 BI&A vendors. 18.6% are served by one sole vendor
and 15.3% use two. This corresponds to 47.5% of
BI&A organizations employing a “best of breed”
approach; another 40.7% prefer to work with one
single BI&A suite.
Looking at the company size, the majority of the
respondents are working in large companies with more
than 1,000 employees (83.0%); the remaining part
work in medium-sized companies. 50.9% of these
companies are in the production industry; the next
greater part are IT software companies (10.2%).
Another 38.9% is more or less spread over other
categories of companies, with bank and financial
service providers (6.8%) and energy supply/ trading
(5.1%) as the largest groups.
Our survey points out that BI&A cost accounting
is important (47.3%) and indispensable for 11.9% of
the participants (cp. Table 4). Another 25.5% rated
BI&A cost accounting as “nice to have”. Beside this,
more than the half of our population (54.2%) have no
form of cost accounting in their BI&A organization.
28.8% are using a product-oriented allocation whereas
3.4% allocate their costs over a production-oriented
allocation. But another aspect shows that 23.7% of the
participants are planning or are currently in an
implementation stage of their cost accounting
initiative.
Table 4. Importance of BI&A cost accounting
Table 3. Overview of sample structure
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4. Empirical analysis and discussion of
findings of cost accounting for BI&A
Evaluating our results in a three-stage process, we
will highlight the most remarkable findings. In Section
4.1, we present the results of our survey by discussing
the potential benefits in relation to the degree of
implementation for the BI&A cost accounting
application areas. The findings will be discussed for
each BI&A stakeholder perspective. We will then
combine these perspectives and analyze the potential
benefits and the degree of implementation separately.
The challenges for practical implementation and
refinement of a BI&A cost accounting are then
described in Section 4.2. In the last section, we present
a summary assessment of our findings.
4.1. Evaluation of the potential benefits and
degree of implementation
To aid comprehensibility, the single application
areas from Table 1 are abbreviated in the same order
according to BI&A development/operation from A1 to
A3, BI&A usage from B1 to B4, and BI&A
organization from C1 to C6. Furthermore, we select
graphical diagrams to visualize differences and
similarities. The relation between the potential
benefits and degree of implementation could be
interpreted as an indicator for desired “need for
action” for the single application areas [8].
Figure 1 presents the results as mean ratings of
how BI&A users assessed the potential benefits and
degree of implementation for each area of application.
It is obvious that BI&A users identify higher potential
in those application areas where they benefit from
directly or the opposite. At first, the high potential
benefit in B2 (overall, partial project calculation), C1
(sensitization of customers for and economical usage
of BI&A) and C2 (increase of BI&A understanding)
means that we may assume that the users are willing
to improve understanding in BI&A organization to
prevent inefficiencies. On the other hand, they see less
potential in A3 of deleting uneconomical BI&A
applications. Maybe the risk of losing necessary
applications is considered to high? Nevertheless, they
asses other areas with high potential (A2:
identification of cost drivers, B4: improvement to plan
BI&A resources, C4: allowing make-or-buy). From
the low degree of implementation, we can conclude
that from a BI&A user perspective, the whole topic of
BI&A cost accounting in relation to the potential
benefits creates both high potential and pronounced
need for improvements.
Figure 1. BI&A users
Looking at the BI&A developer perspective in
Figure 2, we can begin by highlighting the lower
potential benefit assessed for allowing outsourcing
comparisons (C5). This may be explained by
developers being unwilling to make themselves
superfluous. Another obvious point is their low
estimation of potential benefits for improvement in
planning the users’ BI&A demands (B3). This can be
explained by less involvement in this topic from an
“end-user view”. Furthermore, developers confirm
most potential benefits, especially for the BI&A usage
category, e.g. in improving planning of BI&A
resource consumption (B4) or prioritizing order
management by ROI (B1).
Figure 2. BI&A developers
Another high potential is increasing awareness of
BI&A usage (C1) with BI&A cost accounting.
However, we can observe a homogenous course of
both potential benefits and degrees of implementation
with an assessment gap as shown in the BI&A user
perspective. This emphasizes the need for action in all
application areas and gives further evidence for the
need of a BI&A cost accounting.
Not surprisingly, BI&A mangers in Figure 3 see
the most potential benefits in being able to justify their
BI&A organization to management (C3). Another
remarkable area is the high potential in sensitizing
BI&A users to economical BI&A usage (C1) and
increasing BI&A acceptance (C2). In comparison to
those high ratings, cancellation management (A3) has
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the lowest ratings. This contradicts with (C1) because,
by deleting uneconomical BI&A applications,
resources would be freed up, especially in the BI&A
operations area. Nevertheless, BI&A managers see
high potential in prioritizing order management (B1),
doing project calculations (B2), and executing service
management with internal cost allocation (A1).
Looking at the high degree of implementation assessed
in these three areas B1, B2, A1 and C3, we are of the
opinion that these areas represent the BI&A mangers’
daily business and that they are therefore most able to
achieve results here. The most pressing need for action
is situated in allowing make-or-buy decisions (C4),
outsourcing comparisons (C5), and allowing cost
benchmarks (C6) because it is here that the gap
between assessed potential benefits and the degree of
implementation is the highest. Once more, this is
evidence for the high potential of BI&A cost
accounting to improve the current situation in BI&A
departments e.g. by creating cost transparency and
allowing the invoicing of BI&A costs to customers.
Figure 3. BI&A managers
Looking at the potential benefits of all BI&A
stakeholders in Figure 4, we can confirm that there is
a common understanding regarding the high potential
benefits of cost accounting for BI&A. Nevertheless,
considering the low rates in A3 for users and managers
and the high rates in C1 and C3 for managers, we can
assert that there are divergent perceptions between the
stakeholder types, clearly dependent on their role as
users, developers, and managers. We can therefore
assume a tendency for stakeholder types to have
preferred application areas in which they assessed a
higher or lower potential benefit. The two application
areas with the highest assessed potential benefit are
sensitization for customers for using BI&A resources
economically (C1) and justification to management
(C3). Continuous cancellation management by cost
evaluation (A3) is seen on average as the area with the
lowest potential benefit.
Figure 4. Potential Benefits of BI&A
stakeholders
Figure 5 shows that the degree of implementation
in contrast to the potential benefit was, on average,
assessed as lower. Justification to management (C3)
and execution of service management with internal
cost allocation (A1) are assessed with the highest
degree of implementation. The lowest rate is ascribed
by all stakeholder types to continuous cancellation
management (A3). At the same time, there are higher
differences in perception among the different
stakeholders.
Figure 5. Degree of implementation of BI&A
stakeholders
Surprisingly, BI&A managers show deep
deviations in comparison to the other stakeholders
(A1, B1, B2, C1, C2, C3) regarding the degree of
implementation. This is an especially important
finding for managers because their assessments differ
significantly from the other stakeholder types who are
directly involved with development and operation of
BI&A systems and who can potentially estimate the
degree of implementation more realistically.
Consequently, managers should explicitly involve
BI&A users and BI&A developers when it comes to
taking decisions about BI&A cost accounting.
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4.2. Evaluation of challenges to practical
implementation
Companies are confronted by challenges when
implementing or refining cost accounting for BI&A.
To get an insight into this topic, we use
implementation challenges from [8] and adapt them
for BI&A cost accounting purposes. In the interests of
comprehensibility, we abbreviate the implementation
challenges listed in Table 2 from D1 to D8. In
Figure 6, the assessments of all stakeholders are
merged together in one diagram.
Figure 6. Implementation challenges of BI&A
stakeholders
Table 5 shows the corresponding data with mean
value (MV), standard deviation (STD) and rank.
Table 5. Implementation challenges of BI&A
stakeholders
All three stakeholders assessed the effort of
implementation challenges for BI&A cost accounting
overall as comparatively low, with a mean value of
2.22. This is true for all stakeholders, but especially of
the BI&A developers, who display their discrepancy
with a standard deviation of 4.46.
Representing a mean value of 2.42 with a standard
deviation of 0.85, the technical integration of cost
accounting (D7) is the implementation challenge
requiring the highest effort. The high standard
deviation is produced due to the low assessment of
2.25 by the BI&A developers. The availability of
appropriate cost accounting approaches/ models for
BI&A (D8) takes second place among the
implementation challenges. At 2.00, all stakeholders
assessed winning a project sponsor (D2) as requiring
the lowest effort. However, beside these similarities,
there are some notable differences in the assessment of
implementation challenges. The availability of
appropriate cost accounting tools (D5) represents the
highest manageable implementation challenge for the
BI&A developers. From a BI&A user perspective, the
availability of development resources (D4) and the
organizational establishment of cost accounting (D6)
are difficult implementation challenges. In summary,
an approach or model (D8, D6) and technical
assistance (D7, D5) in implementing BI&A cost
accounting dominate this evaluation. At the same time,
organizational motivation (D1, D3) and realization
(D2, D4) are evaluated as much lower.
4.3. Discussion of the findings
The evaluation differentiated by stakeholder-types
clearly shows significant deviations in the assessment
of the status quo and the implementation challenges
for BI&A cost accounting between those groups. This
allows us to confirm the influence of stakeholder
perspectives on the evaluation of IS as stipulated in
Section 2.2.
With regard to the single stakeholder perspectives,
we assume that stakeholders assign higher or lower
benefits to application areas according to the extent to
which they benefit from them. This can be clearly seen
for BI&A users in respect of cancellation
management. Presumably, users are trying to reduce
the risk of losing their BI&A applications. On the
other hand, BI&A users are motivated to support a cost
accounting initiative. BI&A developers assessed
improved evaluation of outsourcing possibilities as
well as providing BI&A users with an individual
service catalog as less important. We think this low
assessment can be explained by lower involvement in
those application areas by developers. Accordingly,
BI&A managers assessed justification to management
as their most important area; this is, after all, one of
their occupations. Another point we want to
emphasize from the BI&A managers’ perspective is
the highest total rating of the potential benefits and the
degree of implementation. This could be explained by
the way BI&A cost accounting is classified as a
management tool; BI&A users and developers have
nearly the same total rating. However, when compared
to BI&A managers, a higher need for action for users
and developers across all application areas dominates
their assessments.
This leads us to the issue of distortions due to
perception. We assume that BI&A users and
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developers are closer to the action and therefore in a
position to assess BI&A cost accounting
implementation more realistically than BI&A
mangers. Especially when looking at the degree of
implementation, deviations are visible due to varying
degrees of involvement in the application areas. The
different perceptions might cause suboptimal results
when it comes to designing or implementing BI&A
cost accounting. The rather low level of conviction
among BI&A users and developers we found could
lead to inaccurate BI&A cost accounting because they
may have to estimate efforts for BI&A projects which
are forwarded to customers. Furthermore, the risk of
accepting by these two perspectives after
implementation increases when there is no common
understanding about the use and benefits of BI&A cost
accounting and may further negatively affect
companies’ BI&A systems. Therefore, BI&A
managers should explicitly involve BI&A users and
developers in the process with regard to development,
implementation or refinement of BI&A cost
accounting initiatives.
These differences in perception are also visible in
the assessment of implementation challenges.
However, there is a common understanding about the
importance of a suitable approach and technical
assistance when implementing a BI&A cost
accounting.
One major implementation challenge we identify
in this study is the gap in BI&A cost accounting
approaches or models. To improve this situation, we
recommend reading further research results, for
example on introducing BI&A service-oriented cost
accounting in [14].
Through the findings of our survey, we conclude
the following:
• divergent perceptions among users, developers
and managers which can lead to less acceptance
and less success when introducing BI&A cost
accounting,
• users want to protect their BI&A applications,
developers try not to be superfluous whereas
managers need a cost accounting system most for
justification,
• the chance of selling a BI&A cost accounting
system in enterprises increases when
concentrating on managers because of their high
belief in the use and utility of a cost accounting
function,
• higher acceptance of BI&A cost accounting and
project success can be achieved when considering
the defined and prioritized needs for action and
implementation challenges.
From our analysis, we can conclude that there is
high potential for establishing BI&A cost accounting
and that companies in our population have a
pronounced need for action of which they are, at the
very least, well aware.
5. Limitations and further work
There are limitations to this paper: primarily,
interpreting the results of the analysis of the
differences in perception among stakeholders
regarding the development or refinement of BI&A
cost accounting. On the one hand, there are restrictions
to the underlying research concept; on the other hand,
there are limitations relating to the number of cases in
the sample collection. The available data set is not
representative and is therefore not suitable for
generalizing our findings. To achieve this, more
studies are needed.
With the data set available, further research is
conceivable by analyzing more questions. It may be
possible to take the amount of BI&A users, the
heterogeneity of the BI&A system landscape, or the
amount of employees working in a BI&A department
into account. From so doing, we expect a deeper
understanding about cost accounting usage. Our future
aim is to implement appropriate BI&A cost accounting
approaches to evaluate how stakeholder perceptions
are affected.
A useful contribution could be expected when
stakeholders are made to consider the most promising
application areas for them when implementing or
improving their BI&A cost accounting and to take the
resulting order of implementation challenges into
account.
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